Video-Based Compensatory Movement Assessment for Supporting Upper Limb Rehabilitation Evaluation

Understanding the characteristics of upper limb movements plays an essential role in motivating and helping patients with rehabilitation. Currently in clinical fields, therapists observe and evaluate the patient's movements qualitatively. In this study, our objective is to quantitatively evaluate upper limb function by quantifying the quality of upper limb movements. Specifically, we introduce a novel metric referred to as the "compensatory degree" which can be generated from videos of rehabilitation movements. The results of a verification experiment show that the compensatory degree is strongly correlated with the evaluation by the therapist (for compensatory movements of the trunk |r| = 0.79, for those of the shoulder |r| = 0.83).